Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Turku, Finland's DISGRACE were way too goddamn good to be so little known--perhaps the fact that they inexplicably "gave up" dark, depressing death metal and took up "positive" punk rock in EXACTLY (???) 1994 explains why the DM lexicon has all but forgotten them. The idea that these dudes hopped off the "metal" bandwagon right when it stopped being cool and hopped on the "punk" bandwagon right when Dookie dropped could lead to some ugly insinuation about where Disgrace's allegiance truly lays, but I prefer to avoid such harsh judgment. The quality of Grey Misery itself insists that this band receive the benefit of the doubt, as it is chock full of some of the ugliest, dirtiest, and most brutal Finnish sludge this side of Rippikoulu.Shambling forth from the mists in a gurgling haze of sloppy blastbeats, Demilichian burp-grunting, overdriven-to-the-point-of-being-indecipherable guitars, and weird, effects-coated spoken/sung parts, Grey Misery commands the attention of even the most jaded Hessian amongst us, and I might add that the two demos (Beyond the Immortalized Existence and Inside the Labyrinth of Depression) and one EP (Debts of God) that preceded it ain't too shabby either. How very strange, then, that they jumped ship from the genre so abruptly and so completely--even to the point that they recorded a fully-metal follow-up full-length in 1993 which never saw the light of day. An odd beast indeed, this "Disgrace". I recommend giving them your immediate attention forthwith.